Blago: I did it for the children
By: Andy Barr
January 29, 2009 05:50 PM EDT

In the end, he did it for the children. And the vulnerable senior citizens.

That was former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's (D-Ill.) defense Thursday as he insisted the Illinois state Senate wanted to remove him from office because he provided health care for low-income families, lowered the price of prescription drugs for seniors and protected the lives of infants. And, he asserted, if that was an impeachable offense, then many other prominent politicians ought to be impeached as well.

The state Senate voted him out of office anyway, by a unanimous vote.

In his final address as the governor of Illinois, rather than defending himself against the allegations that he tried to sell President Barack Obama’s Senate seat, Blagojevich launched into an indictment of his state’s lawmakers who he said were intent on impeaching him as political retribution for health care spending.

“What did I do in this case but provide health care for low-income families?” the governor asked at one point during the nearly hour-long speech. “How is it an impeachable offense to protect low-income parents from losing their healthcare? How is it an impeachable offense to keep those families in a position to be able to see their doctors?”

At another point, Blagojevich asked “how can you throw a governor out of office who was acting to protect the lives of senior citizens and infants and trying to find ways to be able to help families?”

In Washington, Obama issued a statement, saying Blagojevich’s impeachment "ends a painful episode for Illinois. For months, the state had been crippled by a crisis of leadership. Now that cloud has lifted."

The eight articles of impeachment Blagojevich referred to made mention of some of his legislative actions. But the overriding theme of the articles was his alleged attempts to sell Obama’s seat and shakedown local business owners and unions for political contributions.

The case presented against Blagojevich was based on the 79-page criminal complaint U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald filed against him on the day the governor was arrested in December. The complaint was referred to throughout the trial and a portion of the tapes of Blagojevich’s phone calls was played publicly for the first time.

But the criminal complaint has not yet led to an indictment, nor did the tapes played at the trial offer any hard evidence that Blagojevich tried to sell the seat.

The governor was all too aware of that fact Thursday, telling the Senate: “The four tapes that you heard speak for themselves. You also had a chance to listen to the FBI agent who was here. But what did he do? He just read allegations.”

“How can you throw a governor out of office with insufficient and incomplete evidence?”

The impeachment trial, however, did not require the same burden of proof as in a criminal case.

Nevertheless the governor applied the same argument in claiming that he was not allowed to call witnesses to testify on his behalf.

“I wanted to be able to bring in witnesses from Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), to Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and [Sen.] Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), to every single person connected with any conversation I may have had in relation to picking the United States senator,” he said. “Unfortunately, these rules have prevented me from being able to do that.”

The rules did not prevent Blagojevich from calling a witness. Like the state House prosecutors’ case, any evidence the witnesses presented would have had to be approved by Fitzgerald, but Blagojevich never asked to call a witness.

Blagojevich still found a way to link himself with as many prominent politicians as possible. In addition to Emanuel, Durbin, Reid, Menendez and Obama, Blagojevich mentioned Gov. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), Gov. Phil Bredesen (D-Tenn.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), former Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), former Sen. John Warner (R-Va.)—and Warner's ex-wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor—at various times in his remarks.

The last two mentions were the focus of one of the oddest moments in his lengthy defense.

Recalling his time as a freshman congressman, Blagojevich told a story about Warner mistaking him for a staffer and asking him to get a cup of coffee. “I went and asked him, ‘How do you take it?’And he said, ‘Black.’ And I went and got him the coffee.”

“I saw him the following week and he asked me for another cup of coffee,” Blagojevich continued. “He obviously forgot I was a congressman.”

The theme of Blago vs. the world was a continuation of the strategy he pursued in his whirlwind media tour earlier this week. In various interviews, he described himself as a Jimmy Stewart, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”-like character fighting against a corrupt and unfair institution.

Blagojevich recounted his struggle again Thursday.

After recalling how hard his parents, Serbian immigrants who had arrived from war-ravaged Europe, worked to raise him in the United States, Blagojevich said his political success did not come easy.

“I didn’t go to Harvard,” he said. “Applied on a Monday, got my letter of rejections back on Tuesday.”